A Gender Lens on Transnational Labour Migration from Nepal
摘要
The chapter provides an analysis of women’s labour migration from Nepal through a gender lens drawing on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Nepal. I argue that the feminised labour migration from Nepal is largely the result of the ways in which various local and global forces have merged to create conducive conditions for women’s migration in the first place. Additionally, feminised labour migration in Nepal has some distinct characteristics. Women’s migration from Nepal is predominantly in the domestic sector and remains concentrated in the Arabian Gulf countries. Most of the women who work as migrant workers come from the already marginalised dalit and janajati communities. There is the predominant use of unofficial channels of migration. Unlike the feminisation of migration that invokes the notion of ‘hypermobility’ of women across national borders, women’s migration in Nepal paradoxically reveals the importance of immobilities created at different sites and at different levels.